


Peripheral

by silvered_glass



Series: Quiet [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crushes, F/F, HP: EWE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 12:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13030941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvered_glass/pseuds/silvered_glass
Summary: −∞−“I’m not a novelty to be observed,” Pansy says quickly, despite her intention not to speak. And maybe she meant it to sound haughtily dismissive, but it comes out vulnerable even to her own ears.“No, not a novelty. I just...” Ginny shakes her head slowly. “I think... I think I want to talk to you, maybe?”−∞−Pansy isn't sure if she wants Ginny to be looking at her or not.





	Peripheral

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Charlotte_Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlotte_Bird/gifts).



> It was [C's](http://charlotte-bird.tumblr.com/) Birthday recently - and she’s wonderful - and amongst the many lovely things [her art work](https://owlpostart.tumblr.com/) has made me day-dream about, one is how Pansy and Ginny are.. Happy Birthday lovely friend.
> 
> A massive thank you to [frnklymrshnkly](https://frnklymrshnkly.tumblr.com/) whose advice and beta skills made this so much better - to the point that I'd say this is joint gift really! <3

−∞−

 

They run into each other outside the clinic at St. Mungo's. Literally.

Pansy has her head down and is wearing a hat with its brim tilted to the side, both trying not to be seen, and also not looking where she is going. Ginny, coming down the steps at a run, bangs straight into Pansy as she clears the last one. The Muggles passing by hesitate and glance down at them—something in the way they collide must shift the wards around the hospital site.

“Park-in-son,” is the first thing Ginny Weasley says, her voice resigned, as if she’d been expecting the two of them to bowl each other over at some point, and of course it was now, and it was Pansy’s fault.

“Fuck!” is the first thing Pansy says. Then she picks herself up and looks around for her hat.

Ginny makes a sort of moan when she tries to get up, and Pansy pauses. “Are you alright?” Pansy asks. And she actually looks at Ginny properly when she does.

Ginny’s in jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and Pansy can see that even the exposed skin of her legs is covered lightly in freckles. She doesn't answer Pansy, but she does take her hand when she offers it.

Pansy offered it by instinct more than anything. It’s quite hit and miss whether or not someone will accept Pansy’s hand when she offers these days, so she generally doesn’t. Ginny's palm feels dry and a little rough in Pansy’s own, and for something she had for only a moment Pansy misses it when Ginny takes it back.

“Landed funny on my elbow is all. Thank you,” Ginny says when she’s upright.

Then a wizard has to excuse himself so he can walk past them, and they both turn as he does and look at the door to the clinic, and then back to each other.

 

−∞−

 

They see each other about two weeks later in a club. It’s one of a few newer bars and clubs that have opened up at the Knockturn end of Diagon.

Pansy wants to say it’s Draco’s complicated and never ending thing with Potter that has brought them here, but it was her suggestion. Draco had just come off a double shift at St. Mungo’s and he’d actually taken a bit of convincing, but you wouldn't know it now.

He’s by the bar, gesticulating while he tells Potter some story. They are both laughing a lot, Draco leaning into Potter and almost hiding his smile in Potter’s shoulder or neck whenever he does. Potter alternates between putting his hand on Draco’s upper arm and fluffing his hair up at random moments as they speak.

Draco is almost finished his community service now. He’s trying to decide what to do next. He’s got options, Draco: one to study for a Potions apprenticeship in the dispensary at St. Mungo’s, one with a brewer in Paris that he’s tempted to take to be near his Mother, and another at a Charms workshop with a wizard who Draco got to know while he was in the Spell Reversal Ward for a month. Despite the facts that they met because Draco was cleaning his bedpans, and that the wizard had been injured in a workplace accident, Pansy thinks Draco may be most interested in that option.

 

Only two nights before, in the flat she shares with Draco, she’d sat on the floor of their little sitting room finishing off her glass of wine from dinner,listening while he and Potter had talked through Draco’s options.

Although he hasn’t said as much, Potter clearly wants Draco to stay in London and move in with him. But on that evening he had been his annoyingly gallant self and remained utterly impartial and supportive as Draco talked himself in and out of each position. Pansy had found it easier to simply answer, _‘But Paris Draco, why would you consider anything else darling?’_ whenever she was asked her opinion. Potter would scowl at her when she did, but it was easier that way. It’s so utterly what she’d be _expected_ to say anyhow that there was no way Draco was going to take her seriously.

It was only later that night, while she had been charming the creases out of one of her five very ordinary cream silk shirts, which she wears as an unofficial uniform to the only job that she was offered following almost a year of searching (Junior Assistant in the Minor Memos and Duplication Administration Pool at of all places fucking Magical Games and Sports) that she allows herself to be jealous of Draco’s options.

 

And now it’s only on the dark edge of the dance floor that Pansy allows herself to watch Ginny Weasley dancing with Neville Longbottom, and then with a group containing at least two of her brothers, and then with Luna Lovegood and another woman whom Pansy doesn’t recognise. This other woman is tall and has a straight nose the opposite of Pansy's and teeth that flash white under the lights of the club when she smiles at Ginny.

Ginny smiles a lot in return and seems to have very long limbs, which she wraps around her friends and waves in the air.

Pansy fancies herself to be almost at a corps de ballet standard, if she were only more motivated. But she doesn’t know what to do in a club. So she adjusts the spaghetti strap on her dress and sips her drink and alternates between wishing Ginny Weasley would look at her and being petrified that she did just glance her way and caught her staring.

 

−∞−

 

When she comes out of her appointment on the twenty-first of March, Ginny Weasley is in the waiting room. Pansy had just been putting her new hat back on to prepare for exiting the clinic, but there’s a pale exposed ankle and shock of cropped auburn hair in her peripheral vision and Pansy is so surprised that she actually stops and turns and looks. And Ginny’s looking back with a steady gaze and her mouth just a little parted, as if Ginny had almost called out, but just stopped herself.

Pansy thinks about that for a while. About being something on the tip of Ginny Weasley’s tongue.

 

−∞−

 

Pansy goes with Draco and Theo and some man Theo met in  Magical Transportation to a Harpies v. Wimbourne Wasps Quidditch match. She sees her boss, Robin Thackwicker, there. He smiles at her broadly and claps her on her back and says he’s very happy to see she’s taking an interest in the department's activities. Pansy smiles politely and wishes she'd put a Notice-Me-Not over her scarlet pea-coat.

It’s cold and Draco complains the whole time because Ginny Weasley has been called up from the reserves and Pansy steals his omnioculars.

 

−∞−

 

The first Wednesday in April, when Pansy comes out of the clinic, Ginny Weasley is waiting across the road. She looks as if she’s pretending to be inspecting something in the Muggle shop window, but she’s not. Pansy is certain. For starters, it’s a baby shop. So with her heart skipping a beat, she slips across the road.

“Buying a pram?”

“No.”

"Waiting for me?”

Ginny looks at her then. She’s going a little pink, but doesn’t back away at all. “Yes, but not in a creepy way.”

Pansy waits. Always better to let people show their hands her mother would say. Pansy generally doesn’t do that. She’s always jumping in, attacking in defense. Today she stays silent.

“Just. I mean, two in the afternoon on Wednesday—that’s your time. I’ve seen you and I wanted to see you and I didn’t know how...” Ginny stutters a little, but her eyes are a burning golden brown and she still doesn’t look away.

Pansy’s stomach flips a little.

“I’m not a novelty to be observed,” Pansy says quickly, despite her intention not to speak. And maybe she meant it to sound haughtily dismissive, but it comes out vulnerable even to her own ears.

“No, not a novelty. I just...” Ginny shakes her head slowly. “I think... I think I want to talk to you, maybe?”

Pansy thinks she wants to kiss Ginny, maybe, but she doesn’t say that.

 

Instead they go inside a Muggle food-court and Ginny buys them both what she says is a coffee, but it’s got cream on it. After the polite back and forth offerings of spoons and serviettes are done, they are both silent, and Pansy has to stop herself from tapping her nails on the tabletop.

She can't stop herself from blurting out, “I never know how to apologise for my whole existence.” Her nerves send her a little desperate feeling, as if she'll never be able to say to Ginny what she wishes she could.

Ginny huffs a little and looks sceptical, but surprises Pansy when she asks, “Do you need to?”

“I mean-” Pansy stills and looks at a Muggle child picking the pickles off his burger. “Yes.” She swallows. “I was scared, and thought I was not very pretty, but also thought I was special and better then other people, but also knew that I wasn't and was so scared that someone would realise that I wasn't and I was mean because of it for years. Teenagers are horrid, not least when...”

“I know,” Ginny interrupts, “basic teenage bitchiness and add in a fucking war and we’re left with all sorts of fucked up bits. All of us. That’s why we go to counselling, I guess.” Her voice is a little brittle at the end.

They are quiet for a moment. Pansy forces herself to take another sip of her drink. She looks at Ginny’s pale eyelashes. She never realised how thick they were before.

“I hate it—the counselling,” Pansy admits. “I go there, and don’t want to be seen when I do, but I still think I am just doing it for appearances: look at me! Reformed conspirator!”

Ginny shakes her head and smiles softly. “That was a stupid charge. Hardly a conspiracy when you yell your plan out in the Great Hall in front of hundreds of people.”

The smile falls from her face very quickly, and Pansy knows what that’s like. The way one moment the utter ridiculousness makes you laugh and then the horror makes you weep. It’s almost three years and Pansy thinks it will always turn like that. A knife’s edge.

“It was a shit idea. Shitty of me.” Pansy says with finality. She toys with the button on the cuff of her shirt and follows up that honesty with an outright lie. “I just always want to do things that are easy.”

 

Ginny’s eyes flick down to Pansy’s mouth, and then back up to her eyes.

“Well, that’s disappointing for me.” Her wide mouth quirks a little at the side and there’s a challenge in her eyes.

 

And trust Pansy to fall for someone who won’t let her get away with fibs.

−∞−

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I'm [Silvered Glass](https://silveredglass.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you'd like to chat.


End file.
